Sonos chime instead of radio

Hi,

I'm having the same issue. I have 2 alarms set one for kitchen and one for bedroom. Ive been using this for many years. I historically got chime if my Internet has dropped out this is rare. 

Now the chime is going off every morning instead of the radio. I've tried deleting the alarm and redoing. Its very frustrating as the chime us a horrid sound to wake up to! 

I'm playing Virgin Radio via TuneIn. Diagnostic number is 1504169301. 

Thanks. Soozy :) 

After years of zero problems, I too am having occasional alarm failures resulting in chimes. Been happening on and off for about 2 months now, in two *different* houses, different configs and routers etc, which leads me to believe Sonos has introduced some sort of intermittent bug in a recent update. I’m running Sonos 2.

When it fails, I immediately grab my phone (controller) and press play (for the same TuneIn station) and it always works fine. There seems to be something about the *first* connection attempt that is resolved by a second attempt.

Hi @SoozyMagoozy 

In each case, the speakers report being unable to reach the server hosting the Virgin Radio stream. In the case of the Kitchen, I would put this down to what looks like the use of an unsupported extender. In Bedroom’s case, however, this doesn’t apply.

I’d first recommend a reboot of your router by switching it off for at least 30 seconds and to repeat this several times a year.

Try setting an alarm on those rooms for in 2-3 minutes time - does it play? If you change the radio to another station, does that improve matters at all?

If not, I recommend you get in touch with our technical support team for some real-time troubleshooting.

I hope this helps.

Hi ​​​@ings 

Thanks for reporting this here, but in this case it would be very helpful to us if you could also get in touch with our technical support team so some details and diagnostics can be gathered for evidence. I’d recommend a phone call. Thanks.

Thanks Cory for the reply. I’ll try some simple things first (like recreating my alarms) before I reach out to technical support.

Same thing happens to me. It didn’t use to, but now it happens most days! I ran a diagnostics now: 1836993249.

@Juliewf Did you contact Sonos as advised above?

In case it helps someone, prior to contacting support, I’ve tried three things:

1. Deleted and recreated all alarms. This did not solve my chime problem.
2. Powered off and on all Sonos devices.
3. Changed my alarms from on the hour (i.e. 8:00 AM) to five minutes before (i.e. 7:55 AM).

I did (2) and (3) simultaneously. I haven’t had a failure in 4 days but that’s too early to judge, as my failures have been intermittent. 

I did (3) on a hunch that some TuneIn related server was getting slammed by alarms on the hour and so was refusing or dropping connections, leading to the chimes … just a theory.

(BTW my routers already rebooted daily, which is why I didn’t need to try that.)

I am getting the same. I have 2 alarms on the same speaker, one for 05:30 and a second for 06:45. They are both set to play Virgin Radio UK. The first alarm always uses the chime, the second always plays the radio. 
 

I have deleted and recreated the alarm many times, with no success. 
 

looks to be a common issue. Any ideas?

I’d be looking at some sort of network issue. The first alarm is trying to reach out to the Virgin Radio website to get the stream, and is failing to reach it, so it plays the chime. The network issue is being cleared up at the time the second alarm is going off, so the speaker is successful in reaching out to Virgin Radio UK. 

@Airgetlam I had exactly the same thought when chimes first starting happening to me.

For as I said above “When it fails, I immediately grab my phone (controller) and press play (for the same TuneIn station) and it always works fine.” The first connection attempt seems to prime the second.

I think in a lot of network cases, it can….for instance a duplicate IP address. It’s possible the first attempt, although it fails, is enough to tell the router “no, the Sonos wants that IP address, bump off the other one”. Not quick enough for the first to connect, but clears the way for the second to connect. 

This is all guesswork, mind you. The only real way to know for sure is to send Sonos a diagnostic after that initial failure, and ask what they see.  Those of us on these forums don’t have access to that data, unfortunately.

I’m having a similar issue as being reported here. I’ve tried deleting and resetting alarms. Radio will play normally without issue, except when used as an alarm tone

What did Sonos say when you submitted the diagnostic, and called them about it?

I haven’t been asked to submit a diagnostic yet

Submit one anyway, then call them to ask them to see what’s in it. Best to do so within 10 minutes of it playing that chime rather than the radio station, so that the event is captured in the data in the diagnostic. 

Who is your Internet provider? I am having issues with my Zappiti and occasionally SONOS doing the same thing when attempting to access the Internet to retrieve data. On the first try the connection fails and both SONOS and Zappiti are reporting the error message as being unbale to connect to the respective source which is Internet based. On the second attempt both SONOS and Zappiti make the connection and the system operates normally.

I also noticed the same issue whenever I go to certain sites via any of the current browsers on Windows 10. I have a case open with Xfinity and am currently doing a Wireshark capture on my Zappiti and computer to capture the actual error message being returned by the initial attempt.  I suspect it has something to do with a DNS lookup failing.

I’m aware that individual anecdotes prove little.

However it’s now been 18 days since I changed my alarm time from 08:00 to 07:55 and I’ve not had a single failure since. So I still wonder if the (or perhaps a) root cause of the failures is a TuneIn server getting slammed at popular times (on the hour, on the half-hour, etc). 

It’s possible, but that would be hard for Sonos to diagnose, since that server is owned by the streaming radio station, neither Sonos nor TuneIn for that matter. 

If that were the case, I’d expect that the information you’d get from Sonos would be “the system tried reaching out to the service at that moment, but it didn’t respond”.

I do applaud your troubleshooting, however. It’s an interesting piece of data. 

This problem has been driving me nuts for some time now. I had a one to one on the phone with Sonos support on Wed 18th May. Case No. 03899693. He went through numerous checks over a period of 46 minutes. Changed the primary speaker for the alarms. I have one in every room and they are grouped together. It has worked up until this morning, when instead of the programmed LBC, the bloody annoying Sonos chimes are back again. 

When I search for “chime” in this forum I get over 1,500 topics dating back over multiple years. Seems like this issue is pretty common. I am no exception. I have had similar issues with Amazon Music, which is my service of choice. Whether the alarm is set for grouped speakers or not, it will chime every time. I also experimented with “off-hour” times such as 6:54 instead of 7:00 but that didn’t work for me. And after I stop the chime, I am immediately able to play the same channel without any problem. Incredibly frustrating. Also, if music is already playing, a new alarm will transition to a different Amazon Music station no problem.

I spoke with support for almost an hour yesterday and provided numerous diagnostics while resetting the app and going through a number of other steps.  We were able to easily recreate the unwanted chime numerous times.  FWIW, I was told that this is a known issue (not just with Amazon Music but also other services like TuneIn) and that I would be notified via email when a solution was available.  In the meantime, I was told to use Sonos Radio as the music source for the alarm.  So I reset it for Sonos Radio “Cruise Control” at 7:00am and it worked fine this morning.

I run 4 alarms on different sets of Sonos in my house Mon - Fri. I’ve had the same alarms set up for about 2 years. 
 

For about the last month one of the Sonos sets has started consistently playing the chime. As stated by several other above. When the chime happens, I immediately grab my phone (controller) and press play (for the same TuneIn station) and it always works fine. Highly annoying.

I have tried deleting and re-setting my alarm for that Sonos set. It didn’t work. I’m going to try a few other suggestions listed above (set the alarm to slightly off the hour, try Sonos radio instead of TuneIn). I did however want Sonos to know that that more people seem to be having this issues. I’ve had Sonos systems for over 10 years and this is the first time I’ve ever had an issue like this. To me it suggests a problem with a recent software upgrade…

Or perhaps a change in your network environment?

As I noted above, during a round of diagnostics testing I was told by a Sonos help representative that this was a known issue (has anyone else been told its a known issue?) and until they figure out a fix I should use a Sonos Radio station instead of Amazon Music for my alarm.  Well, that did work for a couple of days, but the chime is back even with Sonos Radio.  I am using the alarm only on my Move, which has a reserved IP address on my router and nothing nearby to cause interference as it sits in the charging unit overnight in my bedroom.  And as always, the same station selected for the alarm is immediately able to play after I cancel the chime…